Blaming "radio-phobia" rather than radiological injuries is yet another trick in the nuclear establishment's PR tool boxNuclear power boosters have long tried to convince victims of radioactive catastrophes that "it's all in your head." Both at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the nuclear power industry -- and its friends in government regulatory agencies, the PR industry, and even academia -- tried to convince the public that any ill effects were not due to physical impacts of radioactive fallout, but rather to stress and worry caused by "anti-nuclear fear mongering." A short piece in NewScientist gives this Orwellian "psy-ops" ploy "airtime" yet again, this time in the context of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.

The August 23, 2011 earthquake centered just 4 miles from the North Anna nuclear power plant in Mineral, Virginia has prompted an "augmented inspection team" of the reactor by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission following the initial disclosure that the 5.9 magnitude quake's ground acceleration likely exceeded the design specifications of the nuclear reactor.

The two unit reactor site automatically scrammed following the earthquake that shook most of the East Coast and damaged structures and monuments 90 miles away in Washington, DC when the power plant's electrical switchyard failed to maintain a power connection to the electrical grid. Three of the four emergency diesel generators powered up as needed but a fourth generator failed due to loss of cooling water.

However, one immediate concern focuses on the miles and miles of inaccessible and uninspected buried pipe that carry tritium contaminated radioactive water under the entire reactor complex. While the NRC "augmented" inspection will look over many of the "safety-related" components of the reactors, the federal agency has turned over all of its inspection and enforcement oversight of these inaccessible pipes carrying cancer causing radioactive tritium to a "voluntary initiative" run by the nuclear industry itself. The question of whether or not this radioactive water is now leaking out of broken buried pipes under the reactor complex into groundwater around the Lake Anna area is chiefly up to the industry to self report; a controversy identified by Beyond Nuclear in its 2010 report "Leak First, Fix Later."

The Mainichi Daily News has reported that the Koirino district of the town of Okuma, 3 km from the shattered Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, has an annual radiation dose rate higher than 500 millisieverts (50 rem) -- a whopping 500 times the "allowable" exposure level permitted under ordinary, pre-catastrophe circumstances. One radiobiologist described such a high radiation field as exceeding "the amount that astronauts are exposed to during long stays on the International Space Station," and concluded it would be very difficult to decontaminate. Another area, the Kawabusa district of the town of Namie, registers 223.7 millisieverts (22.4 rem) per year; it is located 20 km northwest of Fukushima Daiichi, at the very edge of the exclusion zone, meaning residents could legally live very close by, despite such high risks.